Last time I went shopping, which was admittedly far too long ago, a friend of mine convinced me to purchase dried beans in addition to beans in a can, arguing that they were cheaper, healthier, and better-tasting. However, they also require more time and effort to prepare, so they had sat in my cabinet until this week. I was invited to a small fiesta party on Friday, so I set the beans to soaking Thursday night.

    On Friday, I decided to cook up some onions and then cook them with the beans. This was a great idea, but after about 10 minutes I started hearing alarms. I went to open our window and shoo smoke away from our smoke detector, when I realized that instead of our smoke detector, I had set off the fire alarms for the whole building.

    Another fellow in the building somehow knew how to disable the alarm, which was good, because in my haste to remove the smoking foodstuffs from the range, I managed to sear my finger with a somewhat painful burn. When showering a few minutes after that, I re-aggravated my burn with the hot water. I can only take comfort in the fact that I didn't get any of the hot sauce I was cooking with up my nose or anything.

    Anyway, as tough as these beans were to cook, they were even tougher to get rid of. Last night I took my pot of beans and was driven by a friend to the party, but we arrived late, and most people had already eaten. A few people had beans, but I ended up leaving with more than 75% of what I had arrived with.

    Then tonight, some college friends were throwing a potluck, so I decided to offer my spicy black beans and onions to them. This time I arrived on time, but there were such huge quantities of food that most dishes had leftovers, and while people did eat half of the beans I brought, I ended up with leftover rice to go with my beans, so I found myself leaving with nearly as much food as I came with.

    The conclusion I've come to is that carefully managed, this pot of beans will last me until 2004.